Republicans getting pumped for Spend-A-Palooza 2012

Sunday

Apr 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMApr 29, 2012 at 11:18 AM

In so many words, Gov. John Kasich has declared war on the General Assembly's spenders. Given that many of those spenders are Kasich's fellow Republicans, this could get interesting. It's already ironic.

In so many words, Gov. John Kasich has declared war on the General Assembly’s spenders. Given that many of those spenders are Kasich’s fellow Republicans, this could get interesting. It’s already ironic.

You’d actually expect Democrats to go for the gold, and so they did. Or, rather, they tried. Democrats asked Ohio’s Republican-run House to approve $400 million in new spending for a (predictably named) Kids and Communities First Fund, to be ladled out, press release by press release, by Ohio’s logrolling (and badly misnamed) Controlling Board.

Democrats, you understand, are always “for the kids,” especially if said “kids” are consigned every school day to teachers who pay dues to unions that make campaign donations to Democrats.

Democrats’ statement on their “Kids … First” plan observed that their proposed $400 million state treasury keg-tap would not only “keep teachers in the classroom” but also “keep … firefighters on the streets.”

Presumably, the Democrats meant “the streets of Ohio,” not, say, the streets of San Diego, a city a Cleveland firefighter can legally call home, thanks to the “shift-trading” Cleveland’s union contract allows.

But financial hypocrisy is bipartisan. Republicans killed House Democrats’ $400 million ($34.67 per Ohioan) cash raid. Then, the House’s Republicans staged a budget raid of their very own.

Nevertheless, Republicans claim voters awarded them the General Assembly control because the GOP is (supposedly) better at watching Ohio’s money than Democrats are. The nursing-home handout says otherwise.

Still, $30 million could be peanuts compared to what, after July 1, might be an election-year spend-a-thon by Republicans. When Ohio finds itself with a general-revenue fund surplus, state law (with some ifs) requires that surplus to be automatically banked in a “rainy-day” Budget Stabilization Fund. (The general revenue fund is Ohio’s main checking account.)

Kasich didn’t ask for any change in the rainy-day law. But the House Republicans made one. They tweaked a mid-biennium budget-revision bill to forbid the Kasich administration — without a specific General Assembly OK — to bank a general revenue fund surplus on June 30, when this fiscal year ends.

Undoubtedly, it’s a complete coincidence that June 30 will be just four months before the Nov. 6 election, when Ohioans will fill the House’s 99 seats and about half the Senate’s 33. June also is the high season for General Assembly fund-raising: Legislators want to get home in time to strut in July Fourth parades. And fiscal year’s end also means lobbyists must justify their fees to antsy clients. You don’t know what persistence means till you’ve watched a lobbyist shop “technical” amendments around the Statehouse in June, late in the legislative session. And, to borrow a bank jingle, if there’s a need, there’s a dollar — a campaign contributor’s scratch for a lawmaker’s political itch.

Legislators meet in Columbus near where Broad and High streets intersect. But what also intersects there are Ohio’s budget and political donations.

So in June, if there’s a half-billion dollars in Ohio’s change jar, our GOP legislature may out-Santa Santa Claus. Republicans rail till they’re hoarse against “government.” But they know government makes, and keeps, many of their pals rich. That’s why the only difference between Ohio’s open-bar Statehouse of 100 years ago, when Warren Harding’s friends cashed in, and today’s Statehouse, are the lies we get told. Or tell ourselves.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University.

tsuddes@gmail.com

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